Accounting News Roundup: Romney Tax Returns Out Tuesday; More Ink for Weinberger; Tax Reform Won't Get Much Love in State of the Union | 01.23.12

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Romney to Release Tax Returns on Tuesday [The Caucus/NYT]
“We made a mistake in holding off as long as we did,” Mr. Romney conceded to Chris Wallace during an appearance on the program “Fox News Sunday.” Mr. Romney defended his previous decision that he would only release his taxes in April if he became the nominee. But he said on Sunday that the issue had become a distraction. “We’ll be putting our returns on the Internet. People can look through them,” he said.

Federal employees owe $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes [WaPo]
About 98,000 federal, postal and congressional employees owed $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes at the end of fiscal 2010, according to records provided by the Internal Revenue Service. The total number of delinquent employees dipped slightly from 2009, but the amount owed jumped by $32 million. The figures are “totally unacceptable and disrespectful to hardworking American taxpayers,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). “If you’re on the federal payroll, the very least you can do is pay your taxes.”

Olympus Shares Advance After It’s Allowed to Maintain Listing: Tokyo Mover [Bloomberg]

Olympus Corp. (7733), the Japanese camera maker that admitted an accounting fraud, rose the most in almost two weeks in Tokyo trading after it was allowed to keep its stock-market listing. The shares gained 7.4 percent to 1,288 yen as of 10:04 a.m. on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, after jumping as much as 9.6 percent, the biggest intraday advance since Jan. 10. The stock was the largest gainer among members of Japan’s benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average, which slid 0.1 percent.

Q&A: E&Y’s incoming CEO outlines growth strategy [WaPo]
Mom is still beaming.

IRS saves $3.10 on each e-filed return [DMWT]
Kay Bell reports: "The precise price comparison is $3.29 to process a paper return vs. only 19 cents for processing an e-filed Form 1040."

Experts say tax reform will take backseat in Obama’s State of the Union address [The Hill]

[W]ith lawmakers on both sides of the aisle laying the groundwork for reform, some tax analysts say they expect the idea of a broad overhaul of the tax code to get at most a passage or two in Tuesday’s State of the Union. That might be, at least in part, because very few Capitol Hill observers believe that a detailed tax reform plan could be passed in 2012, during the heat of a presidential election and the battle to see which party controls Congress next year. “It does make you stop and think about whether you want to talk about it this year when that’s the case,” said Ken Kies, a top tax lobbyist and former Republican congressional aide. “They also haven’t done a thing about it in a year,” Kies added. “If he mentioned it again, it’s one more of those ideas that he hasn’t followed up on.”